The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has demanded a 300 per cent salary increment amid Federal Government’s decision to provide N500bn palliative to cushion the negative effect of fuel subsidy removal.
The National Treasurer of the NLC, Hakeem Ambali questioned the extent to which the palliative would cover, adding that the money would not be enough to cater for one hundred and twenty-five million Nigerians who were believed to be living in poverty.
He said:
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“Definitely not. We have over 125m Nigerians that are technically poor. To what extent can this cushion the effects of this economic hardship?”
Ambali rather suggested that President Bola Tinubu can mitigate the effect of subsidy removal by raising “Minimum wage review of 300 per cent to all workers; granting licences to individuals for modular refineries to refine petrol locally; granting economic stimulus loan to SMEs at 15 per cent rate.
‘’The government should provide social benefits for aged and unemployed youths; agric loans to farmers and youths through the Agric Bank and community banks at single digit rate; provide alternative energy supply such as massive investment in solar power and Compressed Natural Gas to motorists.
“Fix the refineries; reverse the privatization of electricity back to the state due to poor performance; Execute metro rail line projects in all state capitals and reduction of school fees for students of tertiary institutions.”
Recall that on Wednesday, Tinubu wrote to the House of Representatives seeking approval of the amount.
The letter was read during plenary by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas.
The President proposed an amendment to the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act sent to the National Assembly.
It read:
“I write to the House of Reps to approve the amendment of the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act in accordance with the attached.
“The request has become necessarily important to, among other things, the source for funds necessary to provide palliatives to mitigate the effect of the removal of fuel subsidy on Nigerians.
“Thus, the sum of N500bn only has been extracted from the 2022 Supplementary Act of N819,536,937,815 for the provision of palliative to cushion the effect of petrol subsidy removal.”
The president said he hoped the lawmakers would consider his request “expeditiously.”
In December 2022, the National Assembly passed a supplementary budget of N819bn for the 2022 fiscal year.
Thereafter, the House extended the implementation of the 2022 budget till March 31, 2023.
In May 2023, it passed the amendment to the 2022 supplementary budget to extend the implementation of the capital components to December 2023.
